As Bedbugs Bite, Fewer Sweet Dreams For U.s.

Once thought eradicated, the bloodsucking pest is making a comeback all across the nation.

Shortly after Sheila Goldacker moved into an apartment in Nottingham, Md., she woke up feeling itchy.

Her arms, back and stomach were dotted with red spots. Her sheets, she noticed as she leaned in to fix the bed, were speckled.

Goldacker ripped off the sheets and discovered a scene straight from a horror film: her mattress was crawling with tiny brown bugs.

"At that point I freaked out," said the 45-year-old legal secretary. "I get itchy every time I talk about it."

Goldacker had bedbugs, a pest once nearly eradicated in the United States. The recent comeback has left exterminators scratching their heads and Americans scratching everything else.

The bloodsucking insects increasingly have set up housekeeping in apartment complexes, private homes, college dorms and hotels, experts said. In Baltimore, for example, exterminators report the number of infestations has increased exponentially in the past five years.

A common nuisance through the early part of the last century, bedbugs were nearly eliminated in the United States in the 1950s by strong pesticides such as DDT. But the chemicals that once killed bedbugs have been banned as unsafe. No highly effective treatments have been developed, entomologists and exterminators say.

"Put your money on the bugs," said Jay Nixon, president of American Pest Management in Takoma Park, Md. "I don't think we've hit the peak yet."

So why bedbugs and why now? Blame globalization. In many parts of the world, bedbugs continued their bloodsucking ways as their cousins in the developed world were nearly wiped out. With increased immigration and international travel, bedbugs have latched onto luggage and indulged their wanderlust.

Jim Webster, a manager with the regional office of Terminix, said that the exterminator treated nearly 100 bedbug cases in Baltimore this summer, including five in hotels, two of which were high-end, he said.

But there are no guarantees. "They're almost nearly impossible to treat," Webster said. "We can't honestly guarantee that the problem is not going to recur."

Officials at two Maryland colleges are keeping their fingers crossed that bedbugs will not come back to school this fall.

In the spring semester, students discovered bedbugs in dorms at McDaniel College and the University of Maryland, College Park.

The reason that bedbugs are so hard to eradicate may have as much to do with their favorite food as well as changes in pesticide use.

Since they feed on blood, bedbugs don't fall for the baits and traps that exterminators use for insect pests such as ants and roaches.

They are also resistant to dry-residue pesticides because their feet are shaped in a way that they don't pick up much of the residue and carry it back to their nests. They can hide in hard-to-get-to spots and survive for months without feeding.

The bedbugs found in temperate regions are small, wingless insects of the species Cimex lectularius. They are related to other bloodsucking bugs in the family Cimicidae that live on birds and bats.

Smaller than a pencil eraser and flat when not engorged with blood, bedbugs can shimmy into cracks as thin as a fingernail.

They snuggle inside mattresses and sofas, lounge in light switches and picture frames, and hang out in dresser drawers and clothing, said entomologist Larry Pinto of Pinto and Associates.

Although bedbugs are not known to carry disease, they are not pleasant bedfellows. At night, they emerge from hiding places and pierce the skin of sleeping victims with their beak-like mouths. The bugs use sucking mouth parts to drink blood. After three to 10 minutes, they lurch off, engorged, said Michael Raupp, a University of Maryland entomologist. Often a single bedbug will sip from several spots.

In the morning, people awake to clusters of rosy welts on exposed patches of skin.

The inflammation is a reaction the bugs' saliva, which contains an anticoagulant that keeps hosts' blood flowing during the meal. The more the bites are scratched, the more they itch.

After Goldacker awoke to find bedbugs last spring in her apartment, neighbors told her that an adjacent unit had had an infestation that might be spreading, she said.

After contacting the rental office and an exterminator, Goldacker washed all of her clothes and threw away her mattress, bed linens and most of her furniture, she said.

Although the landlord ripped up the wall-to-wall carpet and hired exterminators to treat the apartment several times, Goldacker did not move back.

When she returned to pack her things, she spotted a bedbug strolling down the wall, she said.

An employee of the Southfield Apartments, where she lived, referred calls to the company's lawyer, who declined comment.

Goldacker, who is living with friends, said she still doesn't sleep soundly.

She plans to move to Rhode Island, a decision precipitated by the bedbugs. "Every time I see a bug, I freak," she said. *